Galileo Galilei became world famous for the claim (which he incidentally was not the first to make) that the earth orbited around the Sun. The fact that you are familiar with his ideas is due to a Leiden breakthrough: the publication of Galileo’s work.
If it had been up to the Catholic Church, Galileo’s book Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences would never have seen the light of day. The Church was concerned about Galileo Galilei claiming so openly that the earth orbited around the Sun. This scientific knowledge was a particularly sensitive issue in the religious circles of the time.
Elsevier
The book was published nevertheless, thanks to Galileo’s friends, who were able to smuggle the manuscript to Leiden. It ended up in the hands of the Elsevier printing company, which acted as the official printer for Leiden University from 1620 until the early eighteenth century.
The founder and owner of the printing company was Lodewijk Elsevier, a bookbinder from Leuven who had been forced to flee to Leiden in 1580 due to his Christian Protestant faith. He ended up living on the Rapenburg, in a house adjacent to the Leiden University Academy Building. There he began his work as binder and bookseller. In 1582, Elsevier founded his own publishing company and published his first book in 1583.
Zeitgeist
Elsevier was swimming against the tide of his time. Whereas other publishers focused on producing visually attractive printed materials, Elsevier found it more important to produce robust, readable books. As a result, his editions of the classics were smaller and cheaper than those of other publishers. In this way, Elsevier contributed to the rapid dissemination of scientific knowledge throughout Europe.
Elsevier grew from a simple bookbinder to become one of the largest and most important booksellers and publishers of the 17th century. His books covered all the scientific areas of the time. Elsevier’s books were published not only in Latin, the prevailing international language of the time, but also in Dutch, Italian, French, German, classical Greek and Hebrew.
Sons
Lodewijk Elsevier died in 1617 and his sons took over his publishing company. Elsevier continued to be an important publisher, partially due to the fact that certain books could only be published in Leiden where there was a complete absence of censorship.
The most famous example of this is Galileo’s Discourses which was published by Elsevier in 1637. Galileo wrote this book after he had been placed under house arrest by the Catholic Church Inquisition for an earlier work entitled Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems. This second book also focused on astronomical observations that proved that the earth orbits around the Sun. In publishing Galileo’s book, Elsevier made an important contribution to spreading the astronomer’s theory to the rest of Europe.
